Deadly truth john decker.., p.1
Deadly Truth: John Decker Universe, page 1
DEADLY TRUTH
A CUSP FILES NOVELLA
ANTHONY M. STRONG
West Street Publishing
This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to events or places, or real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Anthony M. Strong
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
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Also by Anthony M. strong
About the Author
1
On a cold November evening in the small town of Blatchford, Pennsylvania, all hell broke loose, for a little while at least.
It began with Maria Brock, a mousy forty-four-year-old woman who found herself pregnant at seventeen, married to the man who got her pregnant at eighteen, and had spent the last six months wondering if that man was cheating on her.
She said nothing, of course. She didn’t even look for concrete proof of his philandering because that would mean she must do something about it. The last thing she wanted was a confrontation because truth be told, Maria was scared. She had spent her entire adult life with Marvin and wasn’t sure she would know what to do without him. Worse, she probably wouldn’t be able to survive. Sure, she’d recently taken a job at the local Dime Mart convenience store working the afternoon shift five days a week. But the pay was lousy, and it certainly wouldn’t cover the bills. For that, she needed Marvin’s paycheck. So, she swallowed her pride and looked the other way, while her husband had his fun.
At least until tonight.
She didn’t start the evening intending to confront her husband. When he called and said the plant wanted him to work late, for the third time that week, she said okay. She told him dinner would be waiting when he came home, and that she would probably get an early night. And when she said those things, she meant them. She made her own dinner and put her husband’s meal in the fridge to reheat when he came in. He would be hungry. He was always hungry after he worked late, even though she knew full well that there was a freeze on overtime and that Frank Peters, who lived next door and worked the same shift, always came home on time.
That done, Maria made her way to the living room and turned on the TV. Her favorite show was on. The one where couples in better relationships than hers searched for holiday homes in sunny climes. She often daydreamed that she was the one on the television, picking between three fantastic properties, while her partner—not Marvin of course because she couldn’t imagine him anywhere tropical—agreed that they needed double vanities, a chef’s kitchen, and a view of the ocean from their master suite.
She settled down to watch the show with a tall glass of iced tea and a king-size Hershey’s bar—there was only one brand of chocolate a proud Pennsylvanian could eat—and tried to distract herself from thinking about what her husband was doing at that very moment. And at first it worked, just like it always did. The couple in the show followed their much too attractive realtor from property to property, pointing at the things they liked, and also the things they didn’t like, which were mostly superficial crap that most normal people wouldn’t care about. But then, as the young couple with too much money arrived at their third and final property, something happened.
She decided she would not put up with it a moment longer. If she was honest with herself, she hated sitting at home while he screwed around. She didn’t want to pretend anymore.
Maria stood up. The Hershey bar fell from her lap onto the floor, but she didn’t notice. Instead, she paid a brief visit to the kitchen, then returned a moment later and crossed to the hallway closet to fetch her coat. It wouldn’t be hard to find Marvin. She had long suspected who he was fooling around with. It was that blonde tramp Melanie Baker who worked in the front office at the plant. The one he couldn’t stop talking about because he was too stupid to realize he was giving the game away. Either that or he didn’t care. Maybe deep down he wanted her to leave him. Their daughter, the reason she married him in the first place, was now all grown up and living in New York City. Their nest, as the phrase went, was empty.
She knew where the woman lived, too.
It wasn’t hard to find out about such things these days. Everything was on the web. All it took was a little cyber-stalking through social media sites and the state’s online voter registration database.
Maria stepped out into the street, and without bothering to close the front door, started toward the condo apartments down near the river. The ones Melanie could afford, but they could not. When she remembered the front door, Maria almost turned back, but then decided she didn’t care. The need to tell Marvin how she felt was too strong. It wasn’t anger so much as a desire to be honest and finally lay it all out. Not that Maria wasn’t angry, because she was. Actually, furious would be a better word. It bubbled up like water from a spring, filling the cavities of her previous reticence with a newfound resolve.
But she never made it to the tramp’s condo, because halfway there she spotted Marvin coming up the street toward her, walking like he had somewhere to be. Striding along with more confidence than she would previously have given him credit for. And when he spotted Maria, he didn’t even slow down. He just approached and didn’t stop until they were face-to-face.
“I need to be honest with you,” he said, breathless. “I’m seeing someone else. It’s Melanie from work.”
Maria said nothing. This stark and unexpected admission by her husband crystalized within her the reality of her true feelings. She didn’t want an honest chat with Marvin. Didn’t want to work things out. She loathed him. She had been lying to herself for too long, making excuses that she needed him, hiding behind a ridiculous fear of being alone.
But not anymore.
Maria was going to face the truth of her feelings head on. And the cold hard truth was that she wanted Marvin to die. Which was why she didn’t hesitate to raise the kitchen knife—the one she’d used to prepare his dinner and couldn’t actually remember bringing outside—and plunge it into his chest before he could even react.
While behind her in the street, twenty-six-year-old Megan Schultz, who worked with Maria at the Dime Mart, was busy smashing her boyfriend’s souped-up Mustang with a baseball bat, because she finally accepted the reality that he would never look at her the way he looked at his beloved car.
Further away, an elderly man in slippers and a robe chased his wife down the sidewalk to tell her, after fifty years, how much he hated the way she cooked Brussels sprouts.
And in the distance police sirens wailed, responding to more disturbance calls than the town of Blatchford had ever before received in a single night.
2
Colum O’Shea, former Irish Army Ranger Wing Special Forces soldier, and now an operative for the shadowy organization known as Classified Universal Special Projects, referred to as CUSP, tore open the manila envelope his employer had given him and deposited the items contained within upon the table.
It was late. Past midnight.
Colum was the lone occupant of a motel room near the highway outside of Blatchford, Pennsylvania, to which he had driven from his employer’s secluded island headquarters off the coast of Maine. He was, until a week ago, assigned to the Irish field office out of Dublin. Not anymore. His skills were needed stateside, and so here he was, at least for the foreseeable future.
Colum spread the contents of the envelope out and studied them. A driver’s license, several credit cards, and an FBI shield attached to a black leather credential wallet. He picked up the wallet and opened it, wondering who he was going to be for the next few days, or maybe longer.
Special Agent Dale Winters.
Do I look like a Dale? He thought to himself, studying the photograph on the credentials. He looked at least a couple of years younger than his true age of thirty-six. Thick, dark short-cropped hair, piercing green eyes, a prominent jaw line, and a muscular military physique. No, he thought to himself, he definitely didn’t look like a Dale.
He examined the rest of the items. The license and credit cards all bore the same name as the FBI credentials. There was even a dry-cleaning garment ticket and a couple of credit card receipts that matched his alias. These were fake, of course, just like everything else, but they added realism to his cover. Best of all, if anyone checked with the Bureau, his credentials would hold up—long enough to comple
Colum gathered the credit cards and license and inserted them into an empty wallet purchased for this purpose. He’d stashed his real wallet containing the documentation of his true identity inside a secure locker back in Maine. Until he returned to collect it, he was Dale Winters. He had barely finished this task when there was a light knock on the hotel room door.
Colum stood and went to the door, leaving the wallet and credentials on the desk. He did, however, scoop up the Glock 19mm handgun provided to him for the duration of his stint as Special Agent Winters. He wasn’t expecting trouble, but Colum had learned never to take his safety for granted. This had gotten him out of more than one situation, and would do so again, he was sure.
“Can I help you?” Colum asked, standing to the right of the closed door close to the window.
“It’s me, Shelby,” a female voice said. “Let me in.”
Colum unlocked the door and stood back, keeping the gun half raised. “It’s open.”
The door swung inward. An attractive woman in her early thirties stepped through. She was slender, with shoulder length black hair and deep brown eyes. He noticed a slight bulge under her jacket. A shoulder holster, no doubt containing a Glock identical to his own. She carried a large travel bag over one shoulder.
“How was the drive?” Colum asked. He lowered the gun and turned back to the desk.
“Frustrating. A tractor-trailer jackknifed on Ninety-Five outside Richmond. Took hours to get past it.” Shelby set her bag on the floor. “Then traffic was backed up through DC.”
“Don’t worry about it. I only got in a short while ago, myself.” Colum said, sitting back down.
Shelby perched on the edge of the bed and kicked her shoes off with obvious relief. “You open your packet yet?”
“Yeah. Just did it.”
“Who are you supposed to be?”
“Dale Winters. Stupid name, if you ask me. Not very imaginative.”
“Not action hero enough for you?” Shelby smiled.
“Something like that.” Colum had only worked with Shelby once before, on an assignment in Prague, but he liked her. She was the real deal. An actual FBI special agent recruited out of the Bureau to work for CUSP. And since they were playing feds for this gig, her past employment would add an air of authenticity, which was probably why CUSP selected her to be his partner. “What’s your cover?”
“Special Agent Emily North,” Shelby replied. “I like it, although they used a horrible photo on the driver’s license. Makes me look chubby.”
“Yeah. At least you don’t have to tell everyone your name is Dale.”
“Suck it up. I’ve heard worse cover names.” Shelby grinned. “Seriously though, I’m surprised they paired us together.”
“Why?” Colum raised an eyebrow. “You don’t like me?”
“No. Not that.” Shelby’s face flushed, just a little. “I like you well enough.”
“Then what?”
“Um . . . The accent?” Shelby replied. “You don’t think it’s odd for an FBI agent to sound so . . .”
“Irish?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t sound Irish when I’m being Dale Winters,” Colum said. When he next spoke, his accent had morphed to American Mid-West. “I’ll be playing the part, don’t ya know.”
“Wow.” Shelby’s eyes widened. “How did you do that so well?”
Colum laughed, reverting to his own accent. “My father was from Dublin, but my mother was born in Chicago. Moved to Ireland after she met my dad and still lives there. She never lost her accent, and I used to copy it as a kid. Now it comes as natural as putting on a fresh pair of socks. I don’t use it much though. The girls think Irish is cuter.”
“That’s shallow.” Shelby replied.
“Fine.” Colum fell back into Mid-West. “I’ll talk like this from now on, then.”
“Please don’t,” Shelby said. “Not in private, at least.”
“See,” Colum said, slipping back again. “Irish is better.”
“Maybe a little,” Shelby agreed. “If your mother is American, does that mean you are, too?”
“Dual nationality. I have two passports.”
“Must be nice.” Shelby said. She covered her mouth and yawned.
“It has advantages,” Colum said. “Not that it matters much. CUSP can provide whatever documents I need to go anywhere they want me.”
“Right.” Shelby nodded. “On that note, what time do you want to start in the morning?”
“Early. Let’s meet at seven. I’d like to get over to the Sheriff’s office first thing after breakfast.”
“Ouch. That is early. It’s almost one in the morning already. I’d better hit the sack.” Shelby slipped her shoes back on and stood up. “You got my room key?”
Colum picked up a key card from the desk and handed it to her. “You’re in twenty-six, next door.”
“Great.” Shelby took the key and picked up her bag.
Colum nodded toward an interior door next to the TV stand. “Rooms connect. My side is unlocked. You should do the same.”
“You expecting trouble?” Shelby asked.
“No. Just a precaution.” Colum stood and walked her to the door. “Sleep tight.”
“You too.” Shelby stepped out into the night and turned toward her room.
Colum waited until she was inside, then retreated to the bed and undressed. He heard the connecting door’s deadbolt disengage on her side, and a voice drifted through.
“All done,” Shelby called out from her room. “See you in the morning . . . Dale.”
“Funny,” Colum replied. “Go to sleep, that’s an order.”
“You’re not my boss,” came the reply, then there was silence.
He placed the Glock on the nightstand and prepared for bed. Then he slipped under the covers, wearing only a pair of boxers, and turned off the light. He was asleep in less than a minute.
3
When Colum left his hotel room the next morning, Shelby was waiting, leaning against the black Chevy Tahoe assigned to him by the CUSP motor pool.
“Sweet ride,” she said as he crossed the parking lot. “They made me drive my POV up here. Told me to expense the gas.”
“POV?” Colum asked, bewildered.
“Personally owned vehicle. It’s fed-speak. Sometimes I forget I’m not in the FBI anymore.”
“Ah.” Colum nodded. “CUSP is about as far from the FBI as you can get.”
“Tell me about it.” Shelby waited for Colum to unlock the car, then jumped into the passenger seat. “Even when I was with the Bureau, I never got a ride this fancy. My first year out of Quantico, they gave me a Pontiac Firebird confiscated from a pimp in Miami. It was ten years old and ran like crap. Engine was so loud a perp could hear me coming from three blocks away.”
“Nice.”
“Yeah. I was so skeeved out driving it, I nagged them for a new set of wheels for months, even though I was just a newbie. God alone knows what had gone on in that car.” Shelby buckled her seatbelt. “You eat yet this morning?”
“Nope.” Colum shook his head. “I figure we’ll pick up a bite on the way over to the Sheriff’s Office.”
“And coffee.”
“Goes without saying.” Colum steered through the parking lot and turned onto the road. Two blocks north was a McDonalds. He pulled into the drive thru. “This okay with you?”
“It will have to be,” Shelby replied. “Doesn’t look like there’s much else between here and town.”
“Not unless you want a gas station hotdog.”
